Held each year, the objective of this seminar is to bridge the gap between academia and Macao’s integrated resort (IR) industry. With the event kindly sponsored this year by Wynn Palace, 5 postgraduate students from FBA presented their masters research thesis to a full venue of around 100 senior executives from the IR industry, representing the six Macao gaming concessions of Wynn, MGM, Melco, GEG, Sands and SJM. In addition, some current postgraduate students and faculty also attended, representing an opportunity for greater exchange of current trends in research. Mr Niale McLoughlan, Vice President, Learning & Advancement at Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace did the welcome talk, receiving a thank you gift from Prof. Jean Chen, the Dean of FBA.
Prof. Glenn McCartney did the opening talk on the impact of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) on the hospitality industry, providing current and future scenarios. This was followed by the talks from the master students;
Cecilia Wong – Exploring the effects of customer incivilities (or rudeness) on casino cashiers in the gaming industry.
Miki Wong – Is sports betting a game of luck or game of skill? Evidence from China
Maria Yang – A study on the Chinese Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) travel market to Toronto
Jimmy Zhou – Casino dining: The neglected part of the gamer’s trip to Macao
Christine Chen – Co-creation tourism in an ancient Chinese town (This paper was published in Journal of China Tourism Research this year https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19388160.2019.1596856) (Christine’s paper was presented by Prof. McCartney).
The students, who all work in industry, provided key insights related to the development of The Cotai Strip and Macao as a tourism destination. IAG was the media sponsor with the following release ‘3rd Mastering Cotai Seminar: Football betting should be considered a gaming of skill’ https://www.asgam.com/index.php/2019/10/27/3rd-mastering-cotai-seminar-football-betting-should-be-considered-a-game-of-skill/
There was great interaction and Q&A between each presentation, including during the refreshment break, offering more networking opportunities. Indeed it is rare that academia get to present to the leading industry executives from across the IR sector, be it casino operations, resort marketing, strategic analysis, food & beverage, player development, hotel operations, etc.. The support of the industry, this year being Wynn Palace, the many senior executives attending, and the students to volunteer to present are so important in ensuring the success of the event.
The event was originally initiated 3 years ago by Prof. Glenn McCartney who saw a need for greater academic and industry engagement, particularly on applied research, and who organised the event again this year with the kind help of the FBA administration team of Carla Leong and Sterling Chao, and FBA Teaching Assistant Tina Fan.
